The Peloponnesian War By Thucydides

Thucydides was an Athenian general who was exiled for 20 years, during which time he wrote about what happened during the first 20 years of the Peloponnesian War. Athens and Sparta were both extremely powerful and both had many strengths, and they both had their own set of allies. The real cause of the war isn’t known, but there are many speculations. The biggest reason being that there was a thirty-year-old truce broken by the Athenians after the conquest of Euboea. Thucydides tries to argue that the underlying reason to the start of the war was because the Athens’ power was greatly increasing and that Sparta felt threatened by them. There were some allies of Athens that tried to leave their ally league. Both sides, the Athenians and the

The first big complaint was that “Corinth was that her colony of Potidaea, and Corinthian and Peloponnesian citizens within it, were being besieged”. The Athenians were causing trouble and tension between several of the Peloponnesian allies, and each time one of the allies started looking at Sparta to step in and help them. The allies were getting frustrated that Sparta wasn’t defending them, and eventually Sparta had to set up meetings to start discussing whether or not the truce had been broken. The Athenians asked if they had permission to show up at one of these meetings and once they were there they gave a speech to try to persuade Sparta to not to go war and Sparta’s allies also gave speeches to persuade Sparta to declare war. According to Thucydides, the Athenians were phenomenal innovators , were extremely adventurous and daring . He also states that Spartans do have their honor and that both of them are “warlike and wise”. Even though Thucydides did give strengths of Sparta he overall said that if they went to war then Athens and their allies would

He was clearly biased towards Athens since that was his country, with the overall tone of the book favoring Athens as being right, stronger, braver, smarter, etc. However, Thucydides did slightly highlight a few of Sparta’s strengths, which I believe to be due to the fact that Athens exiled him for 20 years. During that time frame he was able to see both sides of the war, and to collect many sources for his book. He had extensive knowledge about every aspect of how the war started, but he did write it in favor of Athens. This further proves that in ancient times most people maintained allegiance to their own country, even if he was abandoned by that country. He stated that the war between the Athenians and Peloponnesians “was inevitable,” but I think that while it may have seemed inevitable to the Athenians, this was not the case for the Spartans. The Spartans seemed as though they didn’t want to go to war. They tried to stay out of it for so long, and ultimately the Athenians were the ones that started attacking the Peloponnesian allies. Thucydides wrote as though he was in favor of the war, as he stated, “The Persian War, the greatest achievement of past